


and we may never meet again

by millipop



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: A LOT of Angst, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, F/M, Post-Season/Series 02, basically a riff on 'may we meet again' and what that means idk, i'm sorry i don't know why this is so sad, it differs right in the middle of their last conversation in season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 11:08:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9232193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millipop/pseuds/millipop
Summary: may we meet again; it's their only request to the universe regarding each other, but that doesn't mean it will be answered in the way they want.or,clarke comes inside for that drink, but she still leaves in the morning.--------from the middle of bellamy and clarke's final conversation in season 2 before she leaves, canon divergence.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i have a lot of thanks to give for this fic, bizarrely. it's not like it's amazing or an epic work. but it's my first actual finished bellarke fic even though i've been in this fandom forever, so.  
> thanks to vicky for her thoughts on the ending (you can blame her)  
> thanks to chloe for inspiring me to include certain elements that we really need in show!bellarke ok  
> thanks to alice and sarah and liljana for being enthusiastic about me writing fic  
> thanks to hunters and collectors, without which this fic wouldn't have been inspired, because their song came on randomly as i was walking to the busstop and i almost broke down from the truckload of bellarke feelings it gave me  
> and thank you to all the other bellarke writers out there who fill this tag with fluff and angst and everything in between and inspire me to keep writing even though i have problems with motivation.
> 
> title from 'throw your arms around me' by hunters and collectors, which i recommend listening to if you want to cry.

_and we may never meet again_  
_so shed your skin and let's get started_  
_and you will throw your arms around me_

She saves Bellamy for last, because it will be the hardest.

Monty’s arms unwrap from her, and Clarke hates herself, for what it will do to him. It should be all on her, her decision, and her mistakes. That’s why she has to leave. She can’t deal with seeing his broken face every day.

She watches him walk into camp, arms drawn closely around himself, and her heart clenches when she sees Bellamy’s face, lined with confusion and suspicion as he walks towards her.

Of course he waited at the gate.

They stand together for a beat, and then he says something that sends shivers down Clarke’s spine, because it’s from a time before everything went to (even more) shit.

‘I think we deserve a drink.’

It brings back a memory of smiling at him, laughing even, before things with Anya went sideways, before the war got to Finn, before everything, really.

But Clarke can’t do it. She can’t drink with Bellamy, carefree. She can’t stay here, knowing she’ll be seen as a hero. Because Clarke’s as far from one as you can get.  

‘Have one for me,’ she replies, stoic. She stares out at the people of Camp Jaha as they scurry around, and thinks of the civilised dining halls at Mount Weather. She did the best she could, she _tried_. Tried to make it work, tried to bring peace. Tried to be the good guy. But she wasn’t good enough.

Bellamy makes an indecipherable sound, but his next words are full of comfort, his voice gentle as it hardly ever is, and deep.

‘We’ll get through this.’

He doesn’t believe her, Clarke realises. He doesn’t think she’d leave.

It breaks her, and she lowers her eyes, head shaking. She tries to tell him bluntly, almost whispering.

‘I’m not going in.’

There’s a pause, as they both look out onto the camp. But then he turns to her, steady dark eyes on hers, and he must, he has to know how much his next words mean. Is this what they do now? Echo each other’s words back, trying to grasp at something that was killed in the radiation on Level 5?

‘Look, if you need forgiveness, I’ll give that to you,’ he says, eyes boring into her skull. ‘You’re forgiven.’

It takes everything Clarke has not to betray any emotion, because he’s tearing her up inside. The words she gave to him all those…was it really only a few months ago? Laying against a tree breathing heavily, as Bellamy tried to convince himself he was a monster.

But this isn’t the same.

That Bellamy, although not entirely innocent, was forgivable. Everything he had done, although there was no going back, had a way forward. He could redeem himself, had redeemed himself by saving her life and the delinquents’ lives so many times.

Clarke isn’t forgivable. Her ‘people’ are safe, her friends who were in Mount Weather are safe, and her mother will recover. But no one can forgive her for what she did to Maya, or Jasper, or Monty, or Octavia (God, she bombed his sister, and lied to him about it), or especially Bellamy. She let him burn, let him step in front of her, let him sacrifice himself for her agenda, let him push the lever with her. Clarke can’t let him forgive her for that, and no one person can forgive her for the near thousand lives she’s taken since landing, for less than a hundred ones that happened to be more like hers.

Her silence seems to unnerve Bellamy, and his eyes grow wide, he shifts his feet in urgency.

‘Please come inside,’ he pleads. The tilt of his head, the vulnerable look in his eyes that Clarke’s only seen once, maybe twice before now - she can’t bear to look at him.

She spits out her reply, choking. ‘Take care of them for me,’ and she means it, she really does. She wouldn’t leave if he wasn’t still here. He’s strong enough, he’s good (better than her) enough to take care of them, with that big heart he hides so well.

‘Clarke,’ Bellamy’s voice cracks. She interrupts him before he can go on.

‘Seeing their faces every day is just going to remind me of what I did to get them here.’

‘What _we_ did!’ The hurt in his voice is evident, but he’s wrong. _What I made him do_ , echoes like a gunshot around Clarke’s head. ‘You don’t have to do this alone.’

She has to turn her head away from his broken-hearted stare, but she knows it’s better that she do this. Looking at the camp again strengthens her resolve. And it’s her turn to echo words now, thinking of the man she shot for nothing as she repeats his line.

‘I bear it so they don’t have to,’ she says, determined not to let the wetness in her eyes to go further. _So you don’t have to,_ Clarke thinks.

She sees the exact moment he accepts it, as much as he resents it.

He looks down at the ground, silent for a few moments. Clarke doesn’t leave yet, she can’t turn her back without knowing what he obviously needs to say.

What he does say next surprises her.

‘If that’s what you have to do,’ he edges out. ‘Then I can live with it.’ He doesn’t look like he’s happy, though. ‘But stay, please, one night,’ he begs. ‘Have that drink; say a proper goodbye to your Mom. Get some rations together.’

Clarke almost refuses. His offer is too generous, and she’s already said goodbye to Monty.

But she’s already leaving. She’s already refusing him. He can have one night.

‘Okay,’ she chokes out, and Bellamy startles in front of her, like he thought he would be completely refuted. ‘But it’s just one night, to rest,’ Clarke says, not meeting his eyes. She can’t give him any more hope.

He nods, gruffly. ‘C’mon,’ he says, and he follows her into the camp. She keeps her eyes lowered, not meeting anyone’s gaze, ignoring the people staring. She flinches when a hand slides into hers, but it’s only Bellamy’s, leading Clarke away from the crowd and over towards the tents and sleeping quarters.

‘I figured you wouldn’t want to see anyone?’ he says, his tone rising at the end in a question. She nods stiffly, and withdraws her hand from his. It reminds her too much of last time they were touching, his hand over her glove as she pulled the lever.

A guard, or volunteer, or whatever she is, points them into an empty room, and she’s startled to find a bed with stuff that could be seen as hers already on it. She sits down on it gingerly, right on the edge. Bellamy hovers in the doorway, his bag slung over his shoulder.

‘I’ll bring back some drinks, there’s just some things I need to do.’ She nods again, fiddling with the clasps on her jacket. The jacket given to her by Lexa, who’s gone.

Clarke doesn’t know how long she sits there, staring at the metallic sheen of the walls around her. Living on the Ark seems like it was lifetimes ago. Maybe it was.

Bellamy returns with two cups full of moonshine, and she takes one gratefully, taking a swig. Her companion raises his eyebrows at her eagerness. After receiving a tiny nod from her, he sits softly down next where she’s reclining, sinking into the mattress.

They don’t speak as they sip the moonshine, wincing at its acidic taste. It’s companionable, the silence, but everything hangs in the air between them and Clarke can hardly breathe through it.

She finishes the cup with a last gulp and grips the edge of the mattress. ‘I’ll stay for tonight, but I won’t see my mom.’

Bellamy looks sideways at her, raising his eyebrows.

She shakes her head at what he implies. ‘She won’t let me go if she knows,’ Clarke explains, looking at the floor. ‘And I can’t stay here, Bellamy,’ her voice cracks, and she hates it, taking a gulp of air. ‘I just can’t.’

He stares at her, expression unreadable, but eventually nods slowly, finishing off his drink too.

‘Okay. But at least let me get some supplies together for you.’ Bellamy stands up next to the bed, looking down at her. ‘And I’m going to go get dinner. I’ll cover for you, just, please don’t sneak out when I’m gone,’ he says. ‘Just…wait. Please. I’ll only be an hour or two.’

Clarke nods, shifting back on the bed as if to prove to him she’s not moving. And she’s not, really. He asked her, and she’ll stick to her promise, just for tonight. For him.

True to his promise, he doesn’t take that long, two hours at most. Night has fallen, from what she can see out of a tiny window. Clarke’s kicked her boots off the side of the bed, laying back in her commanders’ garb. It makes her wonder about Lexa and the Trikru, about where they are now, whether they’ve realised what Clarke has done. She supposes it might have undermined Lexa, this act, but she can’t bring herself to care. Not when Lexa’s warpainted face swims into her vision, ruthless and traitorous.

Bellamy has a pack in his hands that he drops into the corner. Clarke bets that it’s filled with every possible useful thing he could wrangle – he’s overprotective in that way.

He’s changed his shirt too, taken off the dirty white clothes he had been wearing earlier. He sinks down on the bed again, lying parallel to her, head on the pillow. But he doesn’t leave them in silence.

Instead he talks, and it really is what he’s good at, Clarke realises. His rousing speeches were always what inspired the kids back at the dropship, it really was a talent. It’s like he knows she needs a distraction, and so he’s launched into doing what he does best.

Bellamy doesn’t talk about Mount Weather, though, for which Clarke is grateful. Although she supposes he hardly wants to talk about it either.

No, he tells her (or maybe he’s just recounting them out loud, it’s hard to be entirely sure) stories. Myths. They’re Greek, she’s pretty sure, one about Pandora’s Box and Elpis, and many about Odysseus. She’s pretty sure the latter stories are Bellamy’s roundabout way of begging her not to go forever, and she even laughs a bit internally, because he’s not subtle.

At some point he pulls out another container of moonshine that she didn’t see him bring in, and offers it to her. And she needs it, honestly. She doubts wherever she goes will have the means or opportunity for this, and like Bellamy said – they deserve it.

Bellamy steals it off her periodically, until Clarke realises it’s a long time later and her head is quite foggy. And perhaps it’s that that triggers what happens.

He starts to trail off as he near the end of his stories. Bellamy hasn’t gone into full detail of Odysseus’s journey, but he’s said enough that she’s sure he’s kind of trying to guilt her into staying. Because he starts talking about Penelope, about her waiting for years and years, always patient and always loyal, and that’s when she kisses him.

It cuts him off midsentence, so he kind of flounders for a second before he gets with the program. But she’s running on a mix of heartbreak and moonshine anyway, and she kisses him until he reciprocates. They’re partially lying down, reclining back on the hard Ark issued pillows, and he snakes his arm around her waist and pulls her closer.

Clarke doesn’t deny him – she craves the contact, reaching her arm up and into his hair, pulling him closer, closer, until their legs are intertwined, her chest pressing against his.

She’s not actually that drunk – it’s the desperation that’s fuelling this, and she’s pretty sure it’s not just her in that respect. Clarke can’t bear to think of him wasting away waiting for her. She may not come back – Earth is kind of like that, it gets in the way.

That’s why she lets him nuzzle down into her neck, closing her eyes once again in longing as he drops languid kisses along her collarbone. The Ark saying runs through her head like a broken record; _may we meet again, please may we meet again, please let us see each other again_. Never will, never definite. Only a question, only an askance. Because that’s the danger – that they won’t. It’s entirely possible, probable even, that they may never meet again.

So she peels his shirt off, lifts her arms so he can do the same, throws her arms around him and sinks into his embrace as night takes over the camp.

***

Bellamy wakes with Clarke Griffin his arms.

The crown of her head is tucked into the crook of his neck, one of her arms draped across his body, the other one curled up between them, resting on his chest. Their legs are twisted in the scratchy Ark-issued sheets – they’d obviously kicked them off in the night when it got too hot.

He doesn’t wake her, though. Bellamy isn’t in any rush to hasten Clarke’s departure. Because that’s what will happen, when she does open her eyes. He’s not sure whether she’ll regret the night spent together, but there’s no question she’ll want to leave as soon as possible, so as to avoid any other goodbyes.

It’s only just dawn outside, from what he can tell from the soft light filtering in from a tiny window high on the walls. They must be in an old Alpha Station living quarters, for them to have that.

Regardless, Bellamy’s reluctant to raise her from sleep just yet. He doesn’t want to deal with her leaving, doesn’t want to deal with what she might say to him about last night. He’s beyond content to see her like this, peaceful, for once. Her forehead is usually lined with creases, whether it be from frowning, stress, or just what he likes to call her ‘urgent’ face.

He’s only seen her without it a couple of times – once at the Unity Day celebrations, where he’d convinced her to let go and have fun (and look how long that lasted). Coincidentally, that night was also when he’d finally convinced himself he didn’t exactly hate his coleader.

The other time, he’d also been watching her sleep – well, not watching, so much as considering. They’d been on their way to intercept Finn and Murphy, and he’d kind of just been marvelling at the fact she was there. Finn had almost convinced him that the Grounders had killed their friends, and yet there she was, jumping into his arms, telling them about the Mountain, and off they were again.

At any rate, it’s nice for him to see her sleeping face again, even if it’s under sadder circumstances, if only less dire or urgent. He remembers her opening her eyes back then, staring at him, her blue eyes reflecting back the firelight. He remembers wishing there was a smile on her face, like they were camping out for fun rather than necessity.

Bellamy knows he wasn’t subtle last night. Regardless of how they’ve said goodbye physically, he’s fairly sure his message got through. Telling her the stories of Odysseus and Penelope….he wasn’t trying to say that they were in deep love, or that he’d put off suitors by unravelling a shroud at night. He was just telling her that he’d be patient. He wouldn’t care how long she took, as long as she tried her best to come back.

He really hopes it won’t take her twenty years.

At the moment he thinks that, wishes it, hopes to God she hears it, Clarke wakes. It’s honestly nice, to see the way she yawns and blinks her eyes, registering his warm weight around her. Clarke looks up at him, and instantly he’s torn.

Bellamy knows her too well, at this point. He knows that she doesn’t regret last night, from her eyes and slight smile. But both are also sad, and so he also knows that it won’t be long before they’re saying goodbye.

For now though, she tightens her arm around him, and he does the same, even though the one below her is asleep. They hold each other, for a while, maybe a few minutes, just taking in each other’s warmth and slow heartbeat.

When Clarke goes to finally wriggle out of his grip, Bellamy holds on, just for a few more seconds. He grips her shoulder, looks into her eyes, and drops a soft, quick, silent kiss on her forehead.

Bellamy’s not entirely sure of its meaning, but he knows he just had to do it. Just once, at least, before she might not come back. Clarke smiles sadly at him, like she knows something he doesn’t, and then the moment is over.

They get up silently, dress without talking. Luckily for Clarke, it’s still dawn, and there won’t be many people around when they (she) leave.

She looks through the pack he gave her thoroughly, as if vetting the contents (as if he’d give her anything less than what she needs). Clarke seems to know him well, though, because she’s giving shakes of her head and rolled eyes at what she obviously thinks are luxuries – soap, a battered book from one of the old bunkers, some pencils. She stiffens at the thing he tried to hide deep in the pack – one of Raven’s old dropship radios, and gives him a glare as she places it on the bed.

‘I’m not taking it, Bellamy.’

He nods his head reluctantly. It was a desperate move anyway, a just-in-case move supposing she didn’t find it. He should have known Clarke would check everything.

They move silently out of the room and through the maze that the crashed space station has caused on the ground. There’s only a couple of guards out at this time, and they’re easy to avoid. Last night he’d made a deal with Wick to shut down the same section as before, and he leads Clarke there now.

Slipping through the now unelectrified cable fence, he watches Clarke’s form in front of him. Last time, they’d been in a hurry – Octavia had been with them, Raven watching them leave. They had hope – the hope of saving Finn, of saving their people. Now Raven’s in an even worse state, Finn’s dead, and he and Clarke and Monty sacrificed their souls to save everyone. And now Clarke’s not leaving on a mission with him to save everyone. She’s leaving to get away from those same people.

Their walk to the edge of the forest is silent but heavy. Bellamy keeps looking behind him, paranoid that they might be followed, but Clarke, well. Clarke seems intent, now. She’s made up her mind now, and he sees in her eyes the steel and determination of not looking back.

It’s Clarke that stops, though, just as the trees start reaching their branches overhead. Dawn has truly broken now, and the blue summer sky peeks through. They’re out of sight from Camp Jaha, but not close enough that it’s like he’s escorting her part of the way on her journey to wherever. He’s just saying goodbye.

She turns to him, and that’s when the lump in his throat really does harden. Bellamy knows that she’s going, but it’s still hard to accept it. Even now that he’s resigned to it, even after their goodbye last night; it’s still going to be pretty fucking hard to watch her walk away. Maybe he made it harder on himself, by convincing her to stay that one night. A taste of what won’t continue.

But he tries to swallow all of it down, now that they’re here, although he’s sure that his voice still breaks, his eyes still beg. It’s part of him now, this protectiveness, caring for her. He doesn’t want her to bear this alone.

‘Where’re you gonna go?’ He asks her, shaking his head slightly. His arms kind of shake at his side, as if they’re itching to reach out, to hold her still, to get her to stay with him. If it had been anyone else, he might have. Might have asked them to stay for him, might have gotten angry at them for leaving him with this burden. Bellamy’s not an idiot – he knows that his acceptance of Clarke leaving now probably won’t stay this way. He’ll get angry at her, in time, resent her.

But he also knows that she knows this too, and if she’s still leaving anyway, well. Maybe it’s the best, for her. And he’ll always want that for Clarke.

She looks up at his question, shaking her head slowly. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, sadly. Like it doesn’t matter. Bellamy just looks at her. He just kind of aches. And then she grabs him and kisses him on the cheek.

If he’s stunned at that, he likes to think he doesn’t show it. Bellamy and Clarke are many things, including what happened last night, but kissing him on the cheek really feels like a final farewell. And if that’s not enough, she winds her gloved hands around him and pulls him close. It isn’t an embrace like last night, of sliding hands and desperation. She hugs him like it’s the absolute last time, and Bellamy thinks, achingly, that it might be.

They hold each other near, almost reminding him of last time, of him almost lifting her off the ground in relief as she flung her arms around him and he did the same. Even though her nose is still tucked into his shoulder, and his face is buried in her hair, it’s not the same. That was homecoming, relief, happiness. This is goodbye, grief, an _I’m sorry_.

‘May we meet again,’ she whispers, voice wavering, before pushing him slightly away. Before she gets all the way out of his arms, he drops another kiss on her forehead. It’s a slow one, his hands on her shoulders, her arms still resting in the crook of his arms.

She nods at him, fast, eyes down like she doesn’t want him to see her cry (which, at this point, he can relate to) and then leaves.

Just like that, she walks away, and he’s left staring after her.

As he watches, he thinks that he’s likely to face everyone’s wrath when he gets back for letting this happen. For not letting them say goodbye. But he didn’t either, and he’s glad for it, as he watches her disappear out of view. Because for one tiny moment, he can allow himself to hope that his prayer might be fulfilled.

‘May we meet again.’

***

(Epilogue)

He dreams of her at night time, even as he grows older. Nothing _bad_ , just her face, sometimes.

Usually it’s nice. Her blonde hair spinning away from him at the Unity Day fire, the way she felt in his arms on their last night; her presence by his side as they led their people, her confidence when she exonerated him to Jaha. But other times there are nightmares: her desperation in that infernal room before they pull the lever, seeing her disappear behind the dropship door, watching her walk away from him into what now feels like certain death.

Abby resents him for a long time. He was the last person to see her, and eventually he becomes the last person to see her alive, because that’s all they can assume, this amount of time later. Clarke Griffin fades from Arkadia’s memory, only remembered as the one who saved them all, and the one walked away from that too. And eventually, only those who really knew her keep her alive. Raven, Monty, Jasper, Octavia, Lincoln, Miller, Harper, Monroe. And he and Abby, of course.

Clarke’s mother officially forgives him years later, at some sort of peace gathering with some Grounders that Bellamy likes to pass by with drinking moodily by the fire. When she approaches him, Bellamy tenses, because he doesn’t know what Abby expects from him to do about it now. He regrets letting Clarke go, sure, but he’s unsure if he’d ever able to do things differently.

But Abby just sits down, pats him on the hand, and forgives him, rambling on (he thinks Kane might have convinced to actually drink something this time around) about love and forgiveness and how she knows it’s bad for him too. It’s all Bellamy can do not to snap at her, because they each knew two different Clarkes, and neither of them will ever truly meet the other, so how can she say they’re the same just because of some word?

And it’s not like he doesn’t fall in love again (although technically, he was never officially in love with Clarke Griffin in the first place). There’s Gina, and a couple of others, but he never truly settles down fully. Sometimes he tries to blame her for that, but it seems like a bit of a stretch – they only knew each other for a few months after all. Other times he nearly forgets her entirely, until something around Arkadia gleams golden, or someone pulls a freaking lever, or someone just _says_ something that he can easily recreate in her voice.

She makes him laugh sometimes. Whenever someone brings up the old days, whatever the hell we want and the like, he laughs at the eye roll she gives him in his mind’s eye. And then he remembers other moments, like joking with her about medicine and Oppenheimer in the midst of the blood plague, or even just their first meeting, where he’d one-upped her for the first time.

But mostly memories of Clarke Griffin make him cry, because all of them are steeped in the war and blood and anger of those first months. They’ve achieved a peace now, however fragile, and he laments she’ll never see it, or if she is out there somewhere, that she’ll never see how he contributed to it, how he tried so hard to make up for the 600 plus lives that lay on his shoulders.

He tries to forget her once, when he’s in the middle of a period of anger towards her. Resolving to never think of her again, he casts out every thought, every tiny thing about Clarke that’s trying to stay. But then it’s ruined, because he can never not remember her as he looks at the summer sky (it was summer and blue when she left).

Once he truly does forget her for a week, and it hits him like a punch to the gut when someone idly says her name. He goes to a faraway field and shouts it out, as loud as he can, to the sky, just so he doesn’t forget it.

Time passes, however, like it is wont to do. Months, years. Even a couple of decades. And now he only idly wonders about her, and only from time to time; it’s not as pressing. He hopes she found a place out there where she could forget and forgive herself, although he also hopes that she didn’t forget him.

Bellamy never even entertains the notion of Clarke dying, because that wasn’t what they had promised each other. On the ark, the end of the traveller's blessing had been metaphorical, a hope and prayer from one loved one to another, to meet again on Earth. Clarke and Bellamy _did_ meet on Earth, and their last words to each other weren’t a farewell to the dead but a hopefully temporary goodbye.

Unfortunately, the scarce amount of hope that exists on Earth never grants them that particular wish.

They never do meet again, or throw their arms around each other in relief. When he’s really old, Bellamy wonders if he’d even recognise her, or she him. But it never matters.

Clarke Griffin is one of a hundred things he thinks of just before he passes, old, happy, and lucky to have lived so long in a world desperate to kill him. She’s a fleeting memory to Bellamy Blake, who’s done so many things in his life to be proud of now, so many things to try and make up for those first heavy mistakes.

But he is happy that he knew her. Although their hopes of meeting again never held up, he’s glad he held her in his arms, for at least a little while.

In his last thought about her, he hopes she never forgets the way they threw their arms around each other, so for those few moments, they were all each other needed.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry i swear i'm usually way more in support of fluff and endgame than this...


End file.
